UPDATE: Pando Daily's MG Siegler reminds us what David Drummond, Google's chief legal counsel, wrote last August, before the Motorola acquisition plan was announced. In a blog post entitled "When patents attack Android," he took a firm, principled stance against per-unit royalty fees:
A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a "tax" for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation.
Hmmm.